


occultism for dummies

by Griftings



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, F/M, Other, arya makes a literal deal with a literal devil, don't print spell instructions off of shady websites, fair warning: the chances of this being picked back up are VERY SMALL., read at your own risk of disappointment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:28:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26483431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Griftings/pseuds/Griftings
Summary: Magic doesn't care about circles, or titles, the differences that definewitchesfromwizards.It doesn't care about academia, or followingrules.Creatures made of magic, creatures like familiars, like spirits, like demons-- they don’t care about that shit either.What they care about isintent.Or, the one where hedge-witch Arya, looking to pact with something with a little more magical firepower than what she's got, offers up her soul to the spiritual chopping block in exchange for help solving the mystery of her parent's sudden murders; and ends up with a little more than she'd bargained for.
Relationships: Jaqen H'ghar/Arya Stark
Comments: 11
Kudos: 89





	occultism for dummies

**Author's Note:**

> **important shit:** this was meant to be the first chapter of a long-term project that i've since abandoned. it wasn't intended to be a oneshot. i've just been cleaning out my WIP folder this week in a fit of pique, junking things i'd half-written and forgotten about, and stumbled over this. it was written in july of 2019, over a year ago, and i'd had every intention of continuing it before idea of writing something of this scale when i was already (and still am) struggling to keep up with _one_ ongoing long-term fic began to intimidate me and i dropped it. i still really like the concept, but thinking about trying to do two big things at once makes me wanna barf. by all rights i should just delete this too since i'm probably never going to pick it back up, but i'd put a surprising amount of thought into the worldbuilding for this setting and i'd feel kinda of remiss if i just tossed it, and i figured maybe someone would be entertained by it.
> 
> i'm mostly just writing this author's note as a warning: the likelihood of me coming back to this is pretty small. consider this a.... teaser?? i guess?? for a project that almost certainly won't be continued. if that's a disappointment you'd rather live without then i don't blame you. on the other hand, since it's unlikely to be continued, i have no problem with answering any questions or curiosities about the setting/direction of the plot in the comments, or i can just write up a general TL;DR version of the outline i'd planned on.
> 
> sorry in advance, but enjoy if you'd like. either way, consider yourself warned.

The spirit-versus-demon topic is one that had always been widely debated within demonology circles. After all, it is only within relatively recent history that the term _demon_ began to carry such negative cultural connotation, and this largely due to a gross misunderstanding of the nature of the supernatural at the hands of persons with no magical abilities. Both spirits and demons can be summoned using circles made with largely the same pool of ingredients; both can possess any sentient or non-sentient creature with enough magical energy to sustain it regardless of if that energy is latent or active, or manifest in a form of their choosing if the spirit or demon is powerful enough; both can be convinced to pact with humans to augment their arcane capacity far beyond the typical enhancements granted by the lesser entities that tend to become familiars, if an adequate price is met. So why the disparity between spirits and demons? Some circles treat with both equally, some strictly avoid one or the other.

It is generally accepted that demons tend to exhibit a more sinister sort of virtue to spirits; two sides to a coin, if you will, with the spirit being associated with "good" and the demon being associated with "bad". Common demons are Spite and Fury, while common spirits are Truth and Trust, and these have led to the belief that _all_ demons are evil, and _all_ spirits are pure, and their devotees (or partners or servants or whatever term is preferred by the pacted) must inherently follow that moral guideline as well. This also tends to create something of a dichotomy between the two supernatural elements; unfortunately, or rather in some cases _fortunately_ when put into practice, the lines are not quite so clearly defined.

When it comes to the moral consciousness of individual spirits and demons, they --much like humans-- cannot be so easily divided into black and white. Even amongst creatures of concept, there exists some spectrum of grey.

For more noteworthy examples, one need look no further than the fiery Paladins of R'hllor and the blue-lipped Warlocks of the Undying; the Paladins pacted to a spirit of Light were revered, and the Warlocks pacted to a demon of Forbidden Knowledge were reviled. And, because one was a spirit and one was a demon, most people conveniently choose to forget that the spirit of Light commanded its Paladins to sacrifice virgins on pyres for no reason but that they were virgins and therefore some archaic definition of _pure;_ and that the demon of Forbidden Knowledge predicted the tyrannical reign of the Stormborn Targaryen Queen of ancient Essos and tried to have its Warlocks defeat her before she came to power, which would have potentially saved hundreds of thousands of innocent lives had the Burning of King's Landing not taken place. But scholars of recent years have posited a different theory than that of the coin: that spirits and demons are, essentially, the same manner of supernatural creature, and are simply _named for their origin of birth._ Just as the Westerosi are from Westeros, the Pentoshi from Pentos, and the YiTish from YiTi, so too is the theory that spirits are named so because they came from the heavens, and demons because they came from the hells.

Following this theory, the heavens and the hells are, of course, simply planar spaces, _planes_ that exist separate from our own without one concrete morality or another arbitrarily stapled to them, and therefore are not the religious afterlife reward-consequence that primitive men made up to justify why things are the way they are. Again, just as Westeros and Essos are both _countries,_ masses of land which support life and population, the planes exist in much the same way: the heavens are planes and the hells are planes. Neither of them are strictly "good" or "bad".

The most cited source for this theory is, ironically, the arguably least credible: that being the Meribald Transcripts, the written transcripts of a recorded but unlistenable conversation of a man named Ray Meribald and an entity which identified itself as an Archdemon, a manner of creature which up to that point had only been vaguely referenced to exist by what we now consider to be "lesser" demons but whose existence had never been confirmed. Ray Meribald was a person of non-magical ability and had never shown any sort of arcane aptitude in his life up to that point. Still, Meribald one day decided he was, quote, "bored", end-quote, and wanted to attempt his own seance. He rented a children's book on conjuration from his local library, drew himself a summoning circle using some chicken stock and ingredients he had in his spice cabinet, and set up a phonograph to record whatever decided to visit him, for posterity's sake. Shortly after completing the summoning spell an entity possessed the body of his dog and began to speak.

The resulting physical record disk is locked away in the Museum of Supernatural Sciences and Arcaneology in Asshai and cannot be listened to because, regardless of the strength of their magic, any human who attempts to listen to the recorded audio suffers a near-instantaneous brain hemorrhage upon hearing the voice of the entity, the fatality rate of which is ninety-eight percent. Likewise, familiars who attempt to listen in lieu of their bonded are instantly banished into non-corporealism and must be resummoned from scratch to the prime material plane, with great loss of memory and arcane capacity.

Meribald was the only one who could hear the recorded audio without his brain being literally scrambled in his skull like an egg, and to his dying day he insisted it was, quote, "Just speaking Common. Just Common, like you or I now." End-quote. When asked, Meribald agreed to transcribe the conversation so that it could be shared amongst academics, as it was apparently the voice of the entity claiming to be an Archdemon and not the words it spoke which caused the incidents. The written conversation reads nearly like an interview and caused an explosive stir in the arcaneological community, and especially amongst conjurers, demonologists, and mediums, the circles which work the most heavily with pacting. The credibility of it has been widely disputed, since no one but Meribald himself was able to listen and therefore the veracity of the entity being an Archdemon, and the rather intimate conversation that follows, cannot be confirmed. Famously, the transcription begins thusly:

Archdemon (A) : I like your dog.  
Meribald (M) : Oh? Are you inside the dog? You are! Hello! He's not really my dog though, you know.  
A : No? Well, he is still a nice dog.  
M : He is nice, yes. I do rather hope he’s alright. This isn’t hurting him, is it?  
A : No, he’s fine. I asked first.  
M : Oh goodness, I didn't really expect this to work. What are you, then?  
A : What's his name?  
M : The dog?  
A : Yes.  
M : You know, he's never told me. He's not my dog after all, he's his own dog. So he's not really mine to name.  
A : That makes sense. Most humans don't tend to think like that, you know. You all seem to like to own things.  
M : Well… I suppose sometimes, yes. But I've never thought that you could claim someone just because you love them.  
A: That's good. More humans should think like you. Do you love this dog?  
M: I do! He's a very good boy. Are you sure that he's alright?  
A: Yes. I promise. (A brief pause.) He likes when you call him a good boy. It makes him happy.  
M: Maybe, since you’re inside him, you could tell me his name? I wouldn't want to call him something he doesn't like just because he's not able to tell me he doesn't like it, that wouldn't be very fair.  
A : (Another brief pause.) He likes when you call him Dog. That makes him happy. You make him happy.  
M : I suppose that’s that, then. He makes me happy, too! Now, what is your name, if you don't mind my asking?

(It is important to note that as a person of non-magical ability at the turn of the last century, Meribald would likely have not been aware of the danger of asking for a demon's true name, which is an offense of extreme degree.)

A : (Amused.) That depends on who's asking, I suppose. That is not meant as a threat, sorry. It's just fact, you know. I have many names. Different people call me different things.  
M : Oh, alright. That's understandable. What do you look like when you're not inside a dog?  
A : What do you mean?  
M : I don't know. I'm not even sure what you are. The book said the spell would conjure an imp, it's supposed to be a children's incantation. I've never actually seen an imp before, you know. Do imps have faces?  
A : (Laughing.) I am not an imp. But I do have faces. I have many faces.

* * *

Arya gets the call while she’s having a consultation with a new client. She frowns as her phone begins to buzz it’s way across the table, the screen lighting up to show a number that isn’t saved to her contacts, with an unfamiliar area code. She silences it with a twitch of her finger.

“Sorry about that. So, let’s get the legalities out of the way first, and then we can talk specifics.” She hates this part. It’s just… tremendously _boring._

She turns the paper toward the two women and circles a couple boxes that need to be checked, stars a few blank spaces that need signatures. “This is your standard non-retaliatory contract which states that you are aware of the inherent risks associated with magic and I cannot be held liable in the unlikely event that tangible or intangible items or peoples are damaged, and as the mediator between yourself and the intended recipient, legal action cannot be taken against me nor can another witch be hired to retaliate against me personally should injury occur to either party.” The tiny speech forces her to take a deep breath afterwards, but she delivers it with little stumbling. She’s had it memorized for a while.

The mundies look at each other. The blonde looks nervous. She fiddles the pen between her fingers and asks cautiously, “What are the chances of that happening?”

The screen of her phone darkens as the call ends. Arya shrugs. “Minor damage is expected, honestly, otherwise what’s the point? Usually not to you guys, but property damage happens occasionally. Water staining is often the worst of it. Pest infestations. That sort of thing. It really just depends on the route you want to go.”

“Ooh,” the ginger says eagerly, turning to her friend, “Abigail went to a witch when Marq cheated on her, and he had roaches crawling out of his pipes for weeks.”

The blonde starts looking queasy in addition to nervous and Arya assures her, “They don’t have to be real roaches. I specialize in illusions. The minor damage is usually caused by the person the spell targets, not the spell itself. Once, I had a guy punch a hole through the drywall of his bedroom trying to hit a fake moth. He, like, really hated moths, I guess. Of course, if you _want_ real roaches, I can do some small conjurations, but that’d be an additional charge to cover the cost of components.”

“I just want to scare him,” the blonde mumbles, “not, like. Mess his shit up.” She turns to her friend and says with a whine, “Are you _sure_ this is legal?” Arya struggles to restrain her eye roll.

“Come on, Alayne,” the ginger says cajolingly and with a gesture to Arya. “She knows what she’s doing. She’s got four and a half stars on Yelp!” Arya makes finger-guns at her. (Admittedly three of the five Yelp! reviews were left by Bran using different usernames, but what mundies don't know won't hurt them.)

Her phone lights up. The number left a voicemail. She’ll listen to it after she’s finished. “If you’re looking for something psychological, some thaumaturge is probably the best bet. You know, flashing lights, random noises, that sort of thing. Have you ever heard of exploding head syndrome? It’s a mun-- non-magical person’s sleep disorder, makes you hear loud banging noises right before you nod off.” The ginger is nodding along enthusiastically, but the blonde still looks hesitant. “Shifting everything in the room three inches to the left, changing the shape of buttons on a jacket, making his coffee taste worse every time he takes a sip. Simple stuff adds up. He’ll be a paranoid mess in a week.”

“Shave his hair!” the ginger cries, shoving at her friend excitedly. “He’s such a fucking ponce about his hair, if he wakes up bald he’ll _flip._ ”

Arya winces. “Ah, legally I’m not allowed to do anything directly to his physical person. No injuries, no appearance changes, nothing like that. Not even a zit hex.” The ginger pouts and she shrugs and offers, “Sorry, but I could lose my license. They’re super strict about that kind of stuff, no physical changes without express consent from the recipient. I mean, I can make it look like he’s bald. But it’ll just be an illusion. I can’t actually touch his hair.” Her phone begins to vibrate once more. Same number. She silences it without moving, an irritated flick of magic that causes the screen to go dark and the vibration to shiver to a stop. This shit already takes long enough without some idiot blowing up her phone.

Quietly, the blonde asks, “Can you give him bad dreams?”

She grimaces. Dreams are… _technically_ in the purview of illusions. She could swing it. Magic is usually pretty lenient on the technicalities. “I could,” she says after a moment, “but dream-projection requires a little bit more to focus on than just a name. Do you have a picture of him, like a physical copy? It's gotta be something I can touch, so a phone pic won't work.” The blonde shakes her head, looking miserable, and Arya sucks her teeth for a moment, thinking. “Anything of his that he has a strong emotional connection to? Like, a jacket, a hat--”

“Wait,” the blonde interrupts suddenly, and starts digging through her purse. “I’ve got-- maybe, um--” After a bit of searching she pulls out a man’s ring on a chain, like a necklace. She hesitates before handing it to Arya, and the chain pools in the palm of her hand. Arya lifts it up to inspect it critically. A jade birthstone set into the ring of a graduating class from a couple years ago, the initials RTN engraved on the inside. She closes her eyes and lets herself feel it, the essence of it, the memories it carries.

A flash of images suddenly zip through her mind: a boy with shaggy brown hair and a lazy smile in a gown and cap; the blonde girl grinning at him eagerly over a cheeseburger at some hole-in-the-wall diner; the indentions it left on the inside of her breasts, hanging low between them from the chain around her neck as he fucked her like his life depended on it. “I love you,” the blonde gasped and the metal of the ring was warm from her skin.

“Yeah,” she says, pulling away from the memories and closing her fist around the ring, “that’ll do. Nice that it has a gemstone in it, those are good arcane conductors.”

Her phone’s screen goes dark. No voicemail this time. “Can I have it back, afterwards?” the blonde asks, her voice small and wounded. Arya pushes the memories of the ring away from her mind. Can’t get personal. None of her business.

“Sorry,” she says, and she even means it, “but it would have to be destroyed as part of the spell.”

The blonde visibly deflates and Arya waffles for a moment. Don’t get personal. None of her business!

“If you want,” she sighs finally, giving herself a sharp mental kick, “I can give you a day to go find something else I can use, but again, it _has_ to have a strong connection to his soul. That’s the only way I could reach his dreams.”

“Just do it now with that,” the ginger urges her friend. “Fuck him! You shouldn’t even want that piece of shit after what he did to you.” The blonde hunches over even further in her seat.

Arya tilts her head thoughtfully. “Take a day,” she decides, handing the ring back and already knowing that she's kissing her paycheck goodbye. “Think about what you want to do and let me know, and I’ll keep the paperwork ready for you.”

Her phone rings. Sansa’s name is on the screen now. She bites her lip and furrows her brows. Nymeria stirs from where she’s been laying beneath the table, between Arya’s feet. She gets up, sniffs the air, and then shakes herself. Bits of fur fly through the air, almost sparkling in the sunlight that filters through the window.

“Ooh,” the ginger girl says excitedly, “what a badass dog! Holy shit, she looks just like a wolf! Can I pet her?”

“No,” Nymeria answers, voice dry, and both the mundies shriek in surprise. Gods, it’s like they’ve never seen a familiar before. The wolf looks between Arya and the phone on the table. There's a rattling sound, and it takes Arya a second to realize that it's Nym's nails, jittering noisily against the floor as she trembles in place, her leg muscles shuddering nervously. “Something’s wrong.”

Arya stands with a sigh and pats her familiar on the head. “Sorry, guys, I have to take this call. I’ll be back in a sec.” She grabs her phone, moves from her tiny living room and into her tiny kitchen. She usually does consults in public places but she just didn’t feel like leaving the apartment today. This is just a small job, anyway. A one-and-done. Cast a couple timed-release spells, burn some sage, drink some coffee and _bam_ there’s a paycheck in the bank. No shortage of spiteful mundies wanting some petty magical revenge on each other. A waste of her talents, really, but it keeps the lights on and the water running and is easy to keep up with during the school year. Enough that she doesn't have to beg for money from the 'rents.

She shuts the kitchen door after Nymeria has slunk in behind her and then answers the phone. “Uh, hey San, can we talk later? I’m with some clients--”

There’s a sharp intake of breath on the other side of the line, wet and ragged. Arya knows that sound intimately and her heart stumbles for a moment before picking up at triple speed. “Sansa? What’s wrong?”

Sansa lets out a damp little cough. When she speaks her voice is nasally, stuttering around tears. “D-did you not g-get a call?”

Arya blinks, leans against the kitchen counter. She’s not sure what’s going on but her hands are already shaking. Sansa hasn’t sounded this bad in-- fuck, years. Not since Joffrey. “I… yeah, someone called, but I didn’t answer--”

Her sister bursts into loud, gasping sobs. Nymeria paces up and down the length of the kitchen restlessly. Her ears are pinned back, her mouth opened in a pant, her golden eyes wide. “Something is wrong!” she says again with a loud bark.

“Yeah, no shit,” Arya snaps at Nymeria. She immediately feels bad for it, but her familiar doesn't even seem to notice, still pacing and panting. Then, trying for soothing, she says, “Sansa. Hey. Talk to me. What’s going on?” Even _she_ can tell it comes out stilted and awkward. She’s not super great at soothing.

Sansa hiccups. “I-it’s-- oh, Arya, it’s M-mom and Da--”

She listens to Sansa try to explain. She hangs up after Sansa dissolves into weeping, insensible. She listens to the voicemail. When she goes back into the living room she feels weirdly calm, like her soul is disjointed, separated from her body. Nymeria panicked and lost corporealization a few minutes ago, and now the kitchen smells like ozone and burnt fur. She’ll have to get the components to resummon her later. She thinks she’s out of wyrmwood to burn. She'll run to the apothecary after she wraps up here. There’s a ringing in her ears, a sort of disbelieving numbness that's stilled the shaking in her hands. The two mundies are bickering at her coffee table, the ginger looking annoyed and the blonde looking weary.

“Um,” Arya says, announcing her reappearance. “So, um. I’m really sorry, but. I don’t think I’m going to be able to take the job right now. I can-- um, I can recommend some witches who do similar stuff. Licensed and everything, just like me. Meera does some nice hoodoo Neck shit, you'll love it.”

The ginger mundie squints at her, irritation obvious. “What? Why?” Whatever she sees on Arya’s face makes her blink in surprise and then she asks, “Hey, are you okay?”

“No,” Arya says, sitting back down in her chair and staring at the stupid pre-written liability papers she’d printed off Google. “My parents just died.”

* * *

They have a closed-casket funeral.

Arya doesn’t even know what Mom and Dad look like; Robb does, he had to identify them for the mundie police that found them. He said they were better off not seeing it. Arya thought about arguing, because she wants to know, she deserves to _know,_ but his face was so pale and his eyes were so sad so she didn’t.

She could have illusioned them better, could have put a glamour on the bodies so that they looked young and healthy and pristine again, instead of whatever it is they look like now. She could make them look the way they looked in pictures of their childhood, or on their wedding day, or the way she will always remember them to look in her mind, the default image her brain supplies when she thinks of _Mom_ and _Dad._ Him in one of his comfy-looking argyle sweaters and khakis and his little bedroom shoes he’d putter around the house in, her in a loose jumper and high-waisted jeans with her hair pulled back into a sloppy chignon and a touch of concealer around her eyes to hide the wrinkles.

She could have, but she didn’t. It would have felt weird and wrong. It wouldn't be _them_ anymore. Because they're not _there._

Bran is still in a medi-magically induced coma so he can't attend. The rest of the Stark kids line up at the front of the service and he’s the only one missing but it still feels weirdly empty without him. Even Jon’s there, down from the Wall. He got bereavement leave or something. She wishes he’d ruffle her hair and smile a little, even if it’s just a sad smile, but his expression is stoic, his mouth set into a thin line and his eyes watery like he’s struggling not to cry.

It’s a nondenominational ceremony, like they’d requested in their wills. Dad gets a couple lines about the Old Gods, Mom gets some about the Seven. Neither religion gets much focus. They could never agree on which one they actually worshipped. It’s all bullshit, Arya thinks, but she doesn’t say it. Even _she_ knows that would be too disrespectful.

Robb gives a eulogy. He has to stop halfway through and whoever’s casting the amplification spell to make him sound louder lowers it when his voice starts to break, cuts the spell off completely when he has to stop talking to cry. The transition from magically-enhanced volume to something mundanely quiet is smooth and seamless, none of the slight popping or fizzing in the inner ear that auditory spells sometimes cause when they’re ended prematurely. Whatever witch cast it did a good job. His wife Jeyne steps up to the podium to hold him while he weeps.

Arya wears a dress, because she thinks it would have made Mom happy at least. Dad probably wouldn’t care, he never really did about that kind of thing, but Mom had always sort of despaired over her tomboyishness. The sleeves of it itch her armpits. Jon didn’t have a suit and Robb only has the one, so he’s borrowed one of Dad’s old ones for work, and he looks-- fuck. Fuck. _Fuck._

Arya wishes she would cry. Why can’t she cry? She feels like she should be crying but she’s not. Sansa’s fucking sobbing and even Jon is tearing up but her eyes are as dry as a bone. She’s starting to get a headache. Her fingers tighten in Nymeria’s fur and she feels the magic in her familiar’s body singing in response. All the wolves are there, except Summer. They can't resummon Summer until Bran wakes up. Rickon looks like he’s more angry than sad, which is typical for Rickon honestly, but it feels appropriate to Arya somehow.

Maybe that’s why she can’t cry. Because deep down, she’s more angry than sad.

* * *

Time passes. A couple months. It’s a blur. They sort out the legal shit. It’s pretty easy, Mom and Dad kept their wills updated regularly.

Bran stays in his coma. Whenever the magi-nurses try to cast spells to communicate with him, they get tossed out of his consciousness. Mixing magic with medicine is always kind of a crapshoot anyway, but especially when it comes to neurological stuff. Magic can be predictably unpredictable, but the human brain has facets to it beyond comprehension. They're not sure when he'll wake up, and the magi-doctors are hesitant to spell him awake given whatever trauma his soul had endured. If it fractured and they wake him up before it heals, he could lose it, and none of them want Bran to come back without his soul.

"Time," the doctors tell the rest of the Stark kids. "The best thing we can do is give him some time."

Rickon stays with Robb and Jeyne and their kid until he’s ready to go back to college. Arya drops out. Emails her professors, withdraws from her classes. Sends a raven to old Marwyn who doesn't use modern technology because he thinks it'll dampen his magic. Maybe she'll go back next year, but right now it's-- it's a lot. Between everything that happened with Gendry and now this, it's just. It's a lot. A whole lot.

Gendry didn't come to the funeral. Part of her is glad he didn't, part of her wishes he had. Part of her is angry that he skipped out. They'd dated for long enough that her parents dying should have mattered to him too, even just a little. Her mom never liked him, but he got on with her dad well enough.

They've only talked once since the funeral, on the phone. " _Hey,_ " he'd said, his voice hesitant. " _Are you good?_ "

"No," she'd answered, and then couldn't think of anything else to say. Shouldn't that have been fucking obvious? That she wasn't good? Her fucking _parents_ just died. How fucking _stupid_ do you have to be to ask something like that?

Anyway. It was awkward. They hung up after like five minutes.

Arya gets a fuckton of money from her share of the inheritance, all the kids do. The estate is in all their names and they have to figure out what to do with it. She ends up with the little house in King’s Landing that Dad bought a few decades ago to stay in when he had to go to the capitol for business. Two floors plus an attic, three bedrooms and two baths, a decent kitchen. It’s a lot smaller than it sounds, the rooms sized like shoeboxes. Small and tall, the way houses are built in King’s Landing, up instead of out, and paid off. After she signs the paperwork it’s in her name. No more rent payments. She’s a homeowner now, with a fat bank account. She probably won’t ever have to work again if she doesn’t want to, or go back to school. She only really went because they wanted her to. She could coast for the rest of her life off the inheritance.

She’d burn it all to the fucking ground if it’d bring her parents back.

The investigation on what happened and who did it is a shitshow. Since Dad was such a prominent member of the magical community the case is taken from the mundie police, but there’s-- something fishy. Witch-Detective Clegane is their liaison and he says shit keeps going haywire. Spells that should work suddenly don’t, arcane misdirections, evidence disappearing and reappearing slightly different. Magical crimes are usually harder to solve just because magic can be so unpredictable. You'd think you could just-- cast a spell and just like that you've got an answer. But magic doesn't really work like that.

“You can try and shove it into a box to try to force it to make more sense,” Clegane tells her once. They go out for lunch, sometimes. She sort of likes him but she also sort of fucking hates him. His familiar is a huge black hound named Stranger who's almost as big as Nymeria. Arya doesn't know what Clegane's virtue is; she's never _heard_ of crassness being a virtue, but if it were anyone's it'd be Clegane's. "But magic doesn’t fit into boxes. It doesn’t fit into circles as neatly as witches and wizards try to make it, it doesn’t follow any fuckin’ _rules._ It does whatever it wants.”

The police won’t give her any specific details about the case. Clegane is apologetic but firm. She fucking _hates him._ Jon has some insider knowledge because he works at the Wall, but what he’s willing to share is minimal since he could get into oodles of trouble divulging case details to civilians. He _does_ tell her that they suspect that whoever did it pacted with something, something big and nasty, something that keeps futzing with the investigation. A Chaos demon, maybe, or a Discord. There aren’t a lot of warlocks around with the sort of clout to pact with a Chaos, so the pool of suspects should be relatively small, but-- it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter.

Clegane can be well-intentioned all he wants, but the police aren’t doing shit. Four months after she puts her parents in the ground, Bran is still not out of his coma, and it's officially declared a cold case.

Four months after she puts her parents in the ground, Arya decides to take matters into her own hands.

* * *

The thing with magic is, Detective Clegane isn’t wrong.

It doesn’t care about fitting into boxes. It doesn’t care about labels or schools or circles. That's a human thing, the fallacy witches and wizards and warlocks create to make themselves and their abilities distinct from each other. Categorize, separate, fit something neatly into sections so it's easier to identify. Humans and their _specializations._ As much as the magical community likes to think it's superior to the non-magical one, they're honestly pretty similar in that regard.

But magic? Magic doesn't care about that shit.

Magic is _magic,_ and it's wild. Predictably unpredictable. Like the world itself is one big patron and all the little witches and wizards crawling over it are just ants begging for power. Magic does whatever it wants. Some days it'll work just fine, and some days you can try to cast the simplest spell that's never given you trouble in your life and it just decides not to go through.

Magic doesn't care about circles, or titles, the differences that define _witches_ from _wizards._ It doesn't care about academia, or following _rules._

Creatures made of magic, creatures like familiars, like spirits, like demons-- they don’t care about that shit either.

What they care about is _intent._

* * *

Arya’s drawing a circle in the attic when Jon calls her. She’s sweaty and she brushes some hair from her eyes as she picks up the phone. “Hey,” she answers, and wrinkles her nose when she realizes she’s gotten some blood smeared on her forehead from touching her hair.

“ _Hey,_ ” Jon says. He sounds good. Stronger, not so fragile as he did while they were dealing with the inheritance bullshit. Jon didn’t get as much as the rest of the kids because-- well, Mom had problems, but between all the siblings they pitched in to make sure he ended up equal. He’s still at the Wall, though, because for some weird fucking reason he likes the Wall. Well, Arya figures that it’s a shit job but someone’s gotta do it. “ _How’s it going?_ ”

The strand of hair falls into her eyes again and she tries to blow it out of her face instead of touching it again. She tucks her phone between her ear and her shoulder and kneels back onto the floor to continue drawing. The diagrams she got off of Google are kind of blurry because she needs to replace the ink in her printer but it’s clear enough to see the general shapes of the sigils, and she dips her fingers back into her little tupperware container of blood. “It’s going,” she answers. “You?”

“ _Been busy up here, got a shapeshifter we’ve been hunting named Varamyr-- anyway, that's not important. I just wanted to check in. Haven’t heard from you in a few weeks._ ”

Jon works with the Watchers up at the Wall. They’re like magical police, except they hunt non-humans who start to muck around with mundies. Shapeshifters, demons, changelings, dreamwalkers. That kind of shit. The veil is thinner up North so a lot of monsters like to hide there where the wild magic helps conceal them. Sometimes the Watchers are called in to hunt rogue witches who do some _real_ nasty shit, the super illegal magic, like necromancy or non-consensual transmutative experimentation on mundies.

Technically what she’s doing is some seriously illegal magic. She’s not a licensed summoner, she didn’t go through the appropriate channels to get the appropriate documentation to request the appropriate permission from the appropriate authorities. She just googled some shit and slapped it together. But magic doesn’t really care about appropriate authorities. Neither do spirits, really. Well, some might. The goody-goody ones, like Order and Law. That’s why she’s going for something a little more loose, a little more open to interpretation.

“I’m good,” Arya says, smearing the blood across the floor and squinting at the sigils she’s supposed to be replicating. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just close enough. Mundies think magic is this rigid thing that you have to do exactly right otherwise shit will explode, but it’s really a lot more casual than that, as long as you know what you’re doing. Half of casting is just intention. The circles and the components and that sort of shit, it’s all just a channel for that intention, and the arcane ability is just a measure of how good you are at warping the world around to fit what you want. Arya is very, very good. “Had to have a repair guy come out and fix some shit a few days ago, the upstairs toilets didn’t want to flush.”

Jon laughs and she smiles to hear it. Jon hasn’t been laughing much lately. None of them have, really. She’ll fix it though. She’ll make it right. “ _I’m surprised you decided to stay in that house instead of selling it,_ ” he says. “ _I thought you hated the South._ ”

She does, but the house in King’s Landing still smells like Dad in the corners, the closets, the small spaces. She opens a cabinet and gets a whiff of leather and sandalwood and the smoke from the pipe he’d toke on whenever Mom wasn’t around to chastise him. He must have smoked a lot here in this house whenever he visited it, since Cat would stay up in Winterfell. She could thaumaturge the smell, make it out of magic so it'd fill her nose like a bubble, so she smelled it all the time, but. Tangible senses are always better than illusory ones, always more pure. It'd feel wrong to fake it.

Maybe it’s weird, but she still hasn’t changed the sheets on the bed. She’s washed them obviously, but she just puts the same bedding back on once it's clean. She keeps the furniture the same, the fixtures. She uses the dishes Dad used, and keeps his weird taxidermy shit on the walls, his shelves with the same useless vintage spellbooks with incantations that nowadays anybody with rudimentary Boolean knowledge could find on Google. He had a record player and sometimes she throws one of his vinyls on, drinks herself stupid and stares at the wall while she listens to his bluesy jazz. Sometimes Nymeria lays at the foot of the couch and Arya can almost believe she's Ice instead. The house still feels like his, his little Southron hideaway whenever he had to leave home for business. She'd only been here a few times in her childhood. It’ll never feel like hers, probably. She won’t be around long enough to give it the opportunity.

Plus, it has the added benefit of being a good distance from all of her siblings, which helps her out considering the shit she’s about to throw down. Sansa is the closest one to her, and she’s still all the way up in the Vale. Arya’s the only Stark in the South now.

And that’s good. It’s lonely, but it’s good. The others won’t be suspected as much after she gets caught, if she stays away from all of them. Unlicensed summoning of a spirit of a class as high as she’s going to try to pact with is a serious offense. Assuming she gets caught at all. Assuming that she’ll still be alive, at the end of it.

She doesn’t say this to Jon, though. Not any of it. Not the sentimental stuff and not the logistical stuff. “I just wanted a change of pace,” she says instead.

“ _Yeah,_ ” he answers. The two of them fall into companionable silence, just listening to each other breathe. Arya loves Jon. She loves him so much. He’d be so disappointed in her if he knew what she was doing. But there’s a reason his virtue is Honor, and hers is Determination. Sometimes the two just don’t overlap.

She moves on to another section of sigils, around the outside of the circle. She’ll have to do the ones on the inside later, once what she’s already drawn has dried. Technically there’s an order that she’s supposed to draw them in, but the spell she pulled from the internet is paraphrased from its original Ancient Valyrian spellbook origin anyway. Spirits usually don’t really care if you play the telephone game six times to reach them. Seances and communing are all about intention. Arya’s never communed with anything stronger than an imp, conjuration has never been her strength, but she’s got the raw arcane capacity to draw a spirit’s attention. She’s just got to throw out the astral net.

You can make ingredient substitutions pretty loosely, too. There’s this guy, some mundie, who apparently had an entire conversation with a pretty high class demon, who said the demon told him that in ancient spells the spirits and demons would tell humans the most ridiculously complicated ingredients had to be used just so that the conjurers would leave them alone. Like the spell she’s working currently calls for, among some other weird shit, the breastmilk of a virgin. How the fuck is she supposed to get that? Regular breastmilk works fine, and it’s a common enough component that she can just pop down to the local apothecary, flash her witching license, and get some out of the cooler.

Asshai’i wood carvings of ancient fire idols meant for ritualistic burning she substitutes with some wooden cyvasse pieces she gets off eBay for like ten bucks. Even the blood is technically supposed to be unicorn blood from Skagos, but goat works just as well. Unicorns are basically just stupidly big goats anyway. Old timey Essosi sorcerers were weird and gullible as hell.

“ _I’m kind of worried about you,_ ” Jon says after a minute or so. “ _Down there alone. I could come visit, if you want._ ”

“It’s fine,” she says, lifting the paper she’s referencing and squinting down at it, smearing blood across the sheet. Is that a φ or a ψ? She knows intellectually that they’re different symbols but they just look so fucking similar. She shrugs and draws something, then leans back and eyes her replication critically. Close enough. “I’m kind of enjoying the space, honestly. I just--” She hates lying to him. “--I think I just need some time, you know?”

“ _Yeah,_ ” he sighs. “ _I know. Just… let me know if you need anything, alright? Sansa says she hasn’t heard from you in a while either. Robb says even Rickon is asking about you. We love you, Arya. I know what you're going through and… I just want you to know that you don't have to go through it alone._ ”

She bites her lip. Depending on how this seance goes, it could be the last time she talks to him. Or, the next time she sees him he could be collaring her with the magic-dampening cuffs the Watch uses on rogue witches. “Hey, it’s fine,” she says, pausing in her work. Sheer force of will keeps her voice from shaking. She sort of wishes she hadn’t picked up the call. She’s been avoiding her siblings since she made the decision to go through with this, didn’t want to risk changing her mind. “I’ll, um. I’ll try to check in more.”

There’s a pause, as if Jon is trying to decide whether or not he believes her, and then he sighs. “ _Alright, Arya. Listen, I have to go, gotta get back to the grind. Just wanted to make sure you’re alright down there._ ”

“I’m always alright,” she lies.

They say their goodbyes and hang up. Arya keeps drawing.

From the corner of the attic where she’s been laying, watching her bonded work with cool golden eyes, Nymeria pipes up, “This is a bad idea.”

Arya huffs out a breath and shoots her familiar a glare. “I know, you keep saying that. And you know I disagree.”

“I just don’t think you’re really thinking this through,” Nymeria says, in a disgustingly reasonable tone of voice. “You’re not a summoner, or a conjurer. You’ve never pacted with anything bigger than an imp before. You don’t know what this spirit is going to ask for in return. The stronger it is, the more they want.”

"And whatever they want will be worth it," Arya says, for like the fiftieth time. If it catches whoever killed her parents, whoever hurt Bran... anything will be worth it.

"Even your life?" Her familiar stands with a stretch before padding over to inspect Arya's work, her nails clicking against the wooden floor. She sits down beside Arya and sniffs the blood thoughtfully before turning those golden eyes back to her. "Even your soul?"

"You'll find some other Stark dipshit to bond with," Arya says by way of answer, more casually than she actually feels. It feels _wrong,_ to tell Nym to find someone else to bond with. Like she’s slowly sawing off one of her own limbs or something. But she’s _determined,_ so she continues, "Maybe Robb's kid, or Sansa's if she ever has some. Determination isn't that rare of a virtue for someone to have. I'm not special. You won’t even remember me, afterwards."

"But I don't _want_ Robb's kid," Nymeria whines, her voice petulant. She pins her ears back and opens her eyes wide, tilting her head at Arya and looking pitiful. It's her _I can definitely digest mortal food and you should definitely give me a bite of your breakfast_ look, one specifically targeted to make Arya guilty. How a wolf her size can pull off puppy-dog eyes so well, she'll never know. "You're _my_ girl. I want _you._ "

Arya reaches out to pet her head but pauses when she realizes her hand is still covered in blood. It runs down her fingers to drip from her palm, landing on a drying rune inside the circle with a splat. She curses and scrubs at it with a napkin, then groans a loud _ugh_ when it smears the rune as well.

Nymeria watches her work to try to fix it, tail swishing. “This is a sign,” she announces, “that the universe doesn’t want you to go through with this. You keep fucking up because it’s not supposed to happen.”

“I don’t believe in that divination shit and you know it,” Arya says with an eye roll, bringing the napkin up to her mouth to spit in it and then going back to scrubbing. “Gods, I can’t believe I forgot to bring fucking Clorox. Can you go check if there’s some under the sink in the bathroom?”

“No,” Nym answers primly, and wags her tail harder when Arya turns to give her an annoyed glare over her shoulder. “If the universe wanted you to have Clorox, you’d have Clorox.”

“Fuck the universe,” she huffs, and leans back to study the results of her mishap with the blood. Yeah, alright. It’s… well, it’s not _perfect,_ but it’ll do. Good enough. That tends to be her attitude with magic in general anyway, and it’s never steered her wrong before. “The universe can suck my dick. I’m doing this. I’m going to fix it.”

There’s a long moment of silence before Nym sighs and tucks her ears back. “I’ll go get the Clorox,” she says, defeated, and descends down the stairs to the lower floor with a clatter of nails.

It takes another hour for the circle to be finished. Sometimes Arya wishes that real life were like those mundie TV shows, where there’s just a jump-cut to the ritual itself and the audience doesn’t have to deal with the particulars of setting it up. Okay, she wishes that _a lot._ She checks and double-checks her sigils and finds them passable, if not immaculate; she collects the components and measures them out according to the spell she’d found online; she sets up her brazier in the middle of the circle and lights it with a quick incantation and feeds it coals until it’s hot enough for her liking. Then she consults the spell again and pauses, confused.

Wait, is she supposed to burn the idols first and then add the ashes to the blood, or bring the blood to a boil first and then add the ashes? The spell doesn’t say, but it _does_ specify that the same pot has to be used for the blood and the milk. What the fuck?

“Universe,” Nym says again with a yawn as Arya deliberates on what order she should do this in, and Arya picks up one of the cyvasse pieces and chucks it at her.

After a few minutes of dithering, Arya finally says, “Fuck it.” She tosses the cyvasse pieces into the pot and then snaps her fingers, instantly lighting them on fire. Evocation isn’t her strong suit, but fire’s a relatively easy element to wrangle because it _wants_ to burn things. Earth is harder because it’s stubborn, and water is the hardest because it’s so difficult to keep to the shape of a spell, but fire _wants_ to be used. Usually fire-evocative spells don’t take much effort, even for an illusionist like Arya.

The treated wood of the cyvasse pieces slowly begin to burn away, the little carved dragon faces seeming to stare at her accusingly as they’re gradually reduced to ash. Arya adds more coal to the brazier; she could use magic to heat it, but even though fire is fairly easy it’s still not her school and channeling a heat spell for as long as she’d have to to bring the blood to a boil would exhaust her.

She picks up her spell sheet again, clears her throat, and reads off the incantation as she pours the goat’s blood into the pot, stirring it once she’s finished pouring to mix the ash and the blood together. There’s a long, awkward wait of several minutes as she waits for the blood to heat up enough to begin to bubble. The fumes are disgusting and her stomach clenches like it’s going to threaten to vomit; Nymeria, the nasty girl, sniffs the air, licks her lips and then says brightly, “Yummy!”

Once the blood is boiling she says the next part of the incantation and adds the breastmilk, stirring once more. Now it smells even worse. She should have asked Nym to get some Febreeze too when she got the Clorox.

Technically she’s supposed to repeat the incantation without stopping until the boiling liquid evaporates completely, but she only manages about ten minutes of constantly speaking High Valyrian before her throat hurts and she starts stumbling over the words. “Fuck it,” she says again, mid-incantation, and just sits back and waits. _Fuck it_ is also her general approach to magic, in addition to _close enough,_ and nothing's killed her yet.

The disgusting goat’s blood-breastmilk cocktail takes some time to evaporate. A lot of time, actually. Enough time that Arya gets bored and goes downstairs to grab her Switch and starts playing Skyrim while she waits.

How the fuck is she supposed to have chanted the entire time? Gods, old spells are stupid.

When it finally _is_ done, what’s left at the bottom of the copper pot is a rancid-smelling sludge, which Arya scoops out with a gag. Trying not to breathe in as she does so, she lifts a hand-mirror she’d grabbed specifically for this and draws a sigil on her forehead with the sludge, which cools rapidly against her skin.

Coughing, she lifts the spell sheet once more and says the final lines of the incantation.

Nothing happens.

Normally when you complete a summoning spell, whatever you’re attempting to contact just… _appears._ It can appear in a variety of ways; imps sort of just pop into existence in front of you, sling-shotted onto the prime material plane because they’re too small to resist the magic tugging at them. But the bigger things, the stronger things, they can stay on their own plane and apparently just _contact_ you. Like a voice in your head, or something. If there’s another living creature around you to possess they might do that instead of speaking directly. Arya’s never summoned anything bigger than an imp, so she’s not sure how long it’s supposed to take.

There’s a long moment of silence.

Then:

“I think you drew that backwards,” Nymeria says quietly, and with a wince.

A few minutes pass.

A few minutes more.

Nothing reaches out to her, nothing _contacts._ Not even an imp appears.

“Fuck,” Arya says, and clears her throat. She wasted an entire goddamn day. Her back hurts from bending over the floor for so long. The skin with the sludge smeared on it feels itchy and gross.

There’s a moment where she realizes just how much she was banking on this to work. Where she realizes how much she’d _hoped_ it would, because she wants to find the people who killed her parents _so badly._ She’d put so much stock into it, so much faith in her own magical ability to grab something’s attention; gods, she’d even made peace with the fact that she’d probably never see her siblings again. She’d been prepared to _die_ for this, to sell her soul in exchange for something bigger and stronger than her to give her retribution. She’d wanted it _so much._

And all she’s got to show for it is a stinky attic.

“Fuck,” she says again, and sniffs.

Nymeria takes a cautious step forward, her tail between her legs, and then when she sees Arya’s face she murmurs softly, “Oh, please don’t cry.” Arya doesn’t even realize she’s tearing up until Nym licks her cheek.

She hasn’t cried once since her parents died.

All it takes is that thought, and suddenly she’s sobbing. Nymeria leans on her, putting her chin on Arya’s shoulder, giving her a doggy hug as Arya throws her arms around the wolf’s massive body and weeps into her fur.

“Oh, my heart,” Nymeria sighs. “My sweet, stubborn heart.”

Arya cries until she has a headache from it, until her chest hurts from the weight of the heartbreak. She’s not sure how long she takes, but eventually Nymeria convinces her to go downstairs and shower. Nym stays in the bathroom with her while she cleans the sweat and blood off her body, and doesn’t say anything when she cries some more beneath the spray of water, the desolate weeping making her choke and cough and hiccup.

They’re dead. They’re fucking dead. She thought she could fix it and she can’t. Magic is loosey-goosey, it’s open to interpretation, it doesn’t care about rules or order or fitting into boxes, but it _failed_ her. She fucked up somehow. She did it. She thought she could fix it and she can’t and it’s _her fault._

The thought reverberates in her head. Her fault. Her fault. Couldn’t get something attention and it’s her fault. She’ll never know who killed her parents and it’s her fault. They’ll never be avenged and it’s her fault. Her fault.

“We can try again tomorrow,” Nymeria tells her softly that night, hours later, when Arya is curled up in the bed her dad used to sleep in that she owns now because he’s _dead._ Nym is laying at the foot of it, her golden eyes glowing slightly in the darkness.

“Yeah,” Arya agrees. Her voice is tired and she knows that she’s not going to try again tomorrow. She knows Nymeria knows that too. It’s time to give up. Determination only gets a girl so far. Her parents are dead and she’ll never know who killed them or why. It’s her fault. Her eyes are sore from crying for so long and her head is killing her. Her heart feels like a stone.

Sleep takes a long time to come.

* * *

And when it does come, she dreams.

* * *

She’s falling through darkness.

Or at least, she thinks she’s falling. There’s no ground beneath her feet that she can feel and her body seems weightless, not tethered by some force so simple as gravity. So she must be falling. But the wind that rushes past her is quiet and her mind isn’t spinning. So maybe she’s only floating.

Something else moves inside the darkness.

She can’t see it, but she can _feel_ it, feel it in her _soul._ Something is there, and it is moving. And it is moving towards her. Something big and powerful and violent. Something whose attention she’s caught.

It paces around behind her. There’s no air current but she _feels_ it shifting, inspecting. She can’t turn her head to search for it. It’s like her body isn’t under her own control anymore. It should be frightening but it isn’t, and _that_ fact frightens her. She can feel her body being manipulated into stillness by this thing in the darkness. Is her mind being influenced by it, too? Is that why she's not afraid? She thinks, deep inside, beneath that projected numbness in her heart, that she should be very afraid.

Something touches her. It isn’t a physical touch. It touches her mind and presses in, like fingers digging through dry soil, or sand. Bits of her are sliding around it as it sifts. It’s searching for something inside of her. She doesn’t know what it’s looking for but she thinks that, if she _could_ be afraid, she'd be scared of what it's trying to find.

There’s a sound like a billow. An inhale. Air filling a massive set of lungs. A moment later that air is upon her body, hot and scalding, as those lungs exhale. Her skin blisters beneath the heat, but it doesn’t hurt. She thinks it should, but it doesn’t. It's painless. It _burns._

Then, a voice from the darkness:

Girl, it murmurs. The voice is deep, sonorous, rumbling, sinfully soft. A whisper in her ear that vibrates inside her body, shakes the marrow of her bones. Lovely girl. What a sad and lonely lovely girl. She has more courage than sense, to search so blindly through the darkness. This one wonders: what does she seek?

She can’t lie inside the darkness. Not even if she wants to. Not while those fingers are digging around inside of her. It'll know, if she lies. “The people who killed my parents and hurt my brother,” she answers. She can’t control the words. They’re ripped from her, pulled from her mouth without her consent.

The thing inside the darkness stirs. It hums, the sound amused. It feels so close to her, some great predator standing just behind her, right at her shoulder. She can’t turn to see it. She doesn’t know _what_ she’d see if she could. This is true, but also a lie. A girl lies to herself. But this one will forgive her, for this one knows she does not mean to lie. If she only sought for these people, this one would not have been called. There are other creatures in the dark for Knowledge, but she sings and it sounds like this one’s song. A girl seeks not Knowledge. A girl seeks _death._

Those fingers take root in her brain. They burrow in, twisting deeper. It hurts, but she doesn’t feel pain. She feels like she’s being torn inside-out, put on display. Dissected, to see what she looks like on the inside. They pluck at that place inside of her that her magic comes from, that feels bruised when she casts too many powerful spells in a row; they touch, gingerly, almost sweetly at her soul.

It feels soft. Intimate. _Sensual._ Like fingers just barely skimming across her skin, but _inside her soul._ She shivers again.

The creature at her shoulder, this _thing_ in the dark, chuckles, the sound quiet and full-bodied and filled with malicious delight. Fae-blooded, child of Children. The red sap is in her veins. A lovely girl has a weirwood soul. Tell this one what she seeks. Tell this one true. This one knows when a girl lies. This one touches her soul. This one feels inside of it, to the core of her. Can she feel this one inside her? Can she feel this one’s touch?

She does. She does. Oh fuck, she does. It feels like nothing she’s ever felt before.

The truth is pulled from her without her control, the same way it has since this thing found her in the dark. “I want to kill them,” she breathes.

It’s the first time she’s really admitted it, even to herself. She’d told Nymeria she just wanted to know who it was, who was at fault, so she could bring them to the cops. Pact with something big that could help her find them, help her wade through whatever magic is screwing with the investigation that has the police running in circles. Get some information that she can present to Witch-Detective Clegane. _A spirit of Knowledge,_ she’d told Nymeria, _or Justice._

But that wasn’t entirely true. In her heart, from the very beginning, she's wanted whoever killed her parents dead. She wants to destroy whoever destroyed her family. She wants to burn them down to nothing, and to watch as they burn.

She’d _settle_ for handing them over to the cops. But she _wants_ them dead.

Magic is all about intention.

A girl begs Knowledge but sings for death, the voice says, agreeing with her. She cries Justice but this is not what she seeks. Lovely girl, dark heart, soul of white wood and red sap. Her soul seeks this one. Her soul seeks _Vengeance._

“ _Yes,_ ” she says fervently, and it's like admitting it finally makes her understand how desperately she wants it. Vengeance. Gods, vengeance. “ _Vengeance,_ ” she gasps, and its name is a prayer.

The heat from the thing’s breath fills her body, sinking into her muscles, warming her bones. Like she’s laying on a bed of coals but it doesn’t hurt. It infuses her, every inch of her, and the feeling is… _ecstacy,_ projected across her skin. Like sex, but not physical.

Shh, sweet girl, sad girl. This one is here. This one knows. This one can give her what she seeks.

She’d weep if she had control over her body. It worked. It worked. She got something’s attention, and that something will help her. She can do it. She can find the people who killed her parents, who hurt Bran. She can have her _revenge._

The creature purrs in her ear, But there is a price.

“Name it,” she answers instantly. She'd been expecting that. There's always a price. “Anything. Everything.”

It chuckles again, pleased. She should be scared. She isn’t. She doesn’t know if that’s because of herself, or because of whatever influence the creature has over her while she’s in the darkness. She can still feel it, pacing behind her in the inky black shadow. Three lives for three victims. A father. A mother. A brother. This one can owe her three. Three lives of their killers she can buy and the price is her weirwood soul. Collection upon death. It is a fair deal. Others in the dark will not deal so fairly as this one. A lovely girl should take it.

Collection upon death. That’s not so bad, as far as deals with demons tend to go, and this has to be a demon. She’s never heard of a spirit whose virtue was Vengeance. Only demons have the nasty virtues.

That’s the rest of her life she’ll get to live before the thing in the darkness comes to collect. Fuck, that _is_ a good deal. Whatever it is behind her isn't wrong, that's way better than she expected to get out of this. She’ll get to see the fruits of her labor, get to see the vengeance her soul has bought. But only if--

“I want to be the one to kill them.”

The creature pauses, those deep scalding breaths against her back stilling for a few moments. A girl makes a deal complicated, it whispers to her finally. Something as big as it feels behind her should not be able to speak so quietly. This one could kill them in their sleep. This one could make them choke on the air in their lungs. This one could have them put a knife in their own throats. This one could finish this task tonight while a girl still sleeps.

If she had control over her body she’d shrug. “My dad was a lawyer. I bargain. You can have my soul, collection upon death, but I want to kill them.”

And gods help her-- she _does_ want to kill them. She wants to find whoever killed her parents and look them in the eye while they die. She never thought that she could be capable of this sort of violence, but she wants, _desperately,_ to find whoever hurt Bran and _see_ them suffer. Dark heart, wooden soul; magic cares more about intention. No wonder she attracted a demon of Vengeance instead of a spirit of Justice.

A soul now, the creature returns, its voice growing sharper, less cajoling, less saccharine. Despite that, its volume never rises above that warm, dangerous whisper. A girl bargains with forces she does not understand. This one offered a good deal. She should have taken it gladly. This one is not some lowly _imp_ that can be bent to her will. This one was ancient before she was _born._ Do not test this one, lovely girl.

“Three deaths and I do it, and you can have my soul when _they’re_ dead,” she returns. It gives up her extra time, the rest of her life, but it’d be worth it. It’d be worth it to see them die.

The thing in the darkness is silent for a long moment. That it doesn’t immediately say no tells her that, for whatever reason, it _really_ wants her soul. Why? What did it mean by Fae-blooded? Child of Children? She’s never heard of a weirwood soul, but apparently having one gives her a significant bartering tool. Maybe she should be more wary, more hesitant to give away the literal _essence of her being,_ but she’s not. Not if it gets her what she wants.

Not if it gets her vengeance.

Deal, the creature says finally. This one accepts. A girl?

“A girl accepts,” she says, and signs her life away.

Good, it murmurs, and then the thing in the darkness behind her moves, shifting, great and expansive. It curls into her field of vision; miles of scales and thick, ropey muscle, spines jutting from its long back as sharp as knives. The size of it is difficult to comprehend, a kaleidoscope of proportions that her eyes have trouble focusing upon: a massive serpent with red-and-white scales and poisonous yellow eyes coils itself around her, encompassing her, using its body to wrap her own up and draw her close to its face. Its breath is blistering, its nostrils glowing like coals, like it has fire in its veins instead of blood. A creature like this shouldn’t exist, but the forms of demons and spirits don’t _have_ to make sense.

She still can't move as it pulls her closer, frozen in place in the dark where only she and the creature exist. Just her, and Vengeance.

It opens its mouth to reveal rows and rows and rows of fangs. There's light flickering within its throat, growing brighter by the second, scorching like the heat of its breath; fire climbing up towards her.

Good, it says again, and then strikes.

* * *

Arya wakes up with a start, breathing heavily. Nymeria stirs slightly at the foot of the bed before settling back down.

Carefully, slowly, she pulls back the covers and tugs at her shirt, feeling along her skin. She swears that she should have heat blisters somewhere, or teeth marks, but her flesh is smooth and unblemished despite the fact that the skin around her shoulders feels stretched tight as if she has a sunburn.

Her heart is racing but she’s not sure why. Her dream, maybe? When she tries to recall it, the memory of whatever she’d dreamed slips through her grasp. Something about a snake? Or a weirwood?

Shaking her head, Arya rises from the mattress and stretches. She feels wide awake and knows that trying to go back to sleep at this point would be a useless endeavor. Her head still hurts from crying so hard earlier, and as soon as she remembers _why_ she was crying she feels like doing it again. Gods she needs a drink.

Swallowing, she leaves the bedroom, closing the door quietly behind her so as not to wake up Nymeria. Her poor familiar has dealt with her enough today. They both have.

She pads down the stairs to the bottom floor where the kitchen is, already intent on finally breaking into Dad’s stash of _incredibly expensive_ brandy that she’d found at the back of the pantry, like he was hiding it or something. He was such a _dad._ Only he would hide the alcohol in a house that he was the only occupant of. The thought makes her throat tighten and her eyes water again before she determinedly shoves it from her mind.

She doesn’t realize there’s already a light on in the kitchen until she’s reached the bottom of the stairs.

She doesn’t leave lights on at night.

Arya freezes. She’s never had an issue with burglars, and the house is in a good neighborhood of the city so she’d never bothered putting up wards. Cautiously, as quietly as she can, she whispers an incantation, draws at her magic until she’s made herself invisible. It’s a difficult spell for most witches, but she’s an illusionist by trade and it comes to her easily enough. Another incantation to muffle her footsteps and then she moves silently towards the kitchen like a ghost.

She hesitates, her heart pounding, before rounding the corner.

There’s a man sitting at her kitchen table, his back to her. His feet are propped up on the table and he leans back in his chair until it tilts on two legs, then rocks forward again, the motion casual and bored. On the table are two snifter glasses and one of those bottles of brandy she’d been thinking about earlier. One of the snifters is empty, but the other is half-full, as if it’s been sipped from. She can’t see his face, but his hair is long and ginger and tumbles across his shoulders in natural waves that would make Sansa and her curling iron jealous.

She’s only a few feet away from her knife block. She could grab one of the carving knives and then--

The man pauses in his rocking and Arya stills, holding her breath. No way. No fucking way. She’s a master at muffling spells, there’s no way he--

Without even turning in his seat, the man lifts a hand and snaps his fingers.

Arya feels the two spells she’d cast on herself dissolve, the tugging at her soul to keep up the ongoing magic dissipating instantly. He’d just ended both her spells like it was nothing. There wasn’t even a contest over it. Normally to disrupt a spell you have to fight for dominance over the active magic, but he just _did_ it, what the _fuck--_

The man finally turns to look at her over his shoulder. There’s a smile on his face, wicked and sharp, and his eyes are a poisonous yellow.

Suddenly, violently, all at once, Arya remembers her dream.

“Well,” says the Vengeance demon who owns her soul, who’s currently sitting at her kitchen table drinking her dead dad’s brandy. The yellow in his eyes fades down to a warm brown, like honey held up against a light, but his smile grows even wider. “No time like the present, yes? Let’s get started.”

**Author's Note:**

> god it was only while i was editing this that i remembered a major reason i got discouraged about this fic is that formatting fonts on ao3 is a huge fucking drag. also for the record, chapter 2 was gonna open with arya throwing random shit at jaqen in a panic while he got increasingly offended about it. "kid you literally invited me here wtf"


End file.
